Before venturing into our main subject matter, a couple of preliminary points are in order. First of all we need to occasionally remind ourselves of a very important point that often gets sidelined and that is the real, concrete, long term change in society towards good can be brought about by not just solely investing time & energy in “talking” about overambitious global goals, the grandness of which debilitate our action, but rather investing in basic small tiny doable tasks that have tangible significance as Voltaire would say. Although it needs to be noted with Zizek that mere “talking” is also not at all to be considered useless in any degree; in fact for any sane long term action to be fruitful at all we need to first talk it out and think about it because any thoughtless action can turn out to be ineffective; but overdoing it becomes problematic.
Now, one of the basic home level initiatives that we can think of to better our world in the long run is to take the responsibility of parenting little more seriously because the kind of life people have in their early childhood creates a long term definitive impact on the kind of interface they are going to have with the world when they grow up; one of the easiest ways to reduce distress and all kinds of psychopathologies that lead to unproductive activities in society is to remain a little more cognizant with our children whilst growing up. One may give an example of Donald Winnicott, the English Pediatrician and Psychoanalyst, who had some good suggestions for raising up psychologically healthy and morally upright children. We may consider gifting books of such authors to our newly married couples. Our topic on the meaning of circumcision (the detail of which is coming below) is related to this first preliminary point.
The second point to note (before we properly take up our subject matter) is that the ritual of circumcision within Islamic tradition is generally considered as “sunnah”. Though there seems to be some legal discussion on this matter in schools of fiqh but what is sufficient for us to know is that it has been repeated as a practice by Muslims throughout the world across generations. Our concern in this article is the “meaning” of this archaic ritual/practice which has ancient roots. Many Muslims try to give scientific hygiene centric explanations of this age old ritual (which effectively has been in practice before Prophetic movement in Arabia). Although it needs a separate treatment in itself but let us mention in passing that the Sacred laws are primarily psycho-spiritual centric practices rather than health centric. Alcohol is not considered unlawful by Quran merely because it is physically “unhealthy” but rather the concerned aayah posits that it spreads “ism” i.e. sin; the prohibition therefore is “moral” and not mere health advice. Practices like “tayammum” which have psycho-spiritual significance of imbibing the feeling of inner purification by outer touch on earth cannot be explained away in scientific health centric terms. There is a lot of implicit influence of “scientism” in such desperate modern explanations. Moving on, let us now mention how circumcision has been understood since time immemorial. Beyond narrow health centric logic, it has a deep psychological significance that needs to be restored in public discourse to ensure “psychological uprightness” among the men of our society. How is that so, we shall see below.
To understand the very essence of all archaic rites and rituals, Joseph Campbell, the great 20th century scholar of mythology, teaches us one very crucial point about them and that is all such “weird” practices are nothing but outer representations of transformation of consciousness from one threshold to another; birth, naming, puberty, marriage, death, etc are realized through various “rites of passage”. Archaic tribal “logic” was (psychologically) more mature than our supposedly advanced understanding. These rites of passage are critically important because as one moves from one stage of consciousness to another, one needs to fully realize this transition psychologically and not just biologically. For example, as we shall see in our main case of circumcision here, if a boy grows up without psychologically severing from maternal mode of relationship, he will stay arrested within what is referred to as unconscious “mother complex” even though the man grows up biologically, what Jung calls becoming a grown up “man-child”.
When the child opens its eyes, the mother is its whole world. In its infancy and childhood, world (i.e. the mother) reveals itself as a benevolent, loving, embracing reality. The child feels himself at the centre of the universe. He just broods for a while and his wishes are made true. This maternal mode of relationship leaves a deep psychological imprint within the psyche of the child. If the child grows up without fully coming out of this mode of relationship then one is going to be psychologically insufficient to face the harsh reality which is not “mother like”. Untreated “mother complex” makes men into sentimentalists/touchy. (This may look obvious from outside but it has deep unconscious presence in the psyche which needs to be consciously treated). They lose contact with reality and this is the typical symptom of this sort of “mother complex”. Men who are not able to (psychologically) distinguish between the extremely loving, loyal “mother” and the extremely difficult, unpredictable, ruthless, imperfect external world – where one has to participate & struggle after leaving childhood – inevitably suffer from mother complex and get caught up in escapism, defeatist mentality and quietism. It leaves them incapable to move out of “mother’s nest”, face the world and wrestle with it. True manhood, therefore, is not mere biological event but a psychological state of being to be earned.
For example, we may see when such men fail in some exam or some other thing in life, they immediately become sentimentalists to such an extent that they become psychologically ascetic, saying that “hell with people and world, I won’t appear in any exam ever now, I don’t want to live, I want to go to mountains and live in a cave, this world is not worth it” – this is symptomatic of deep unconscious wish to recede back to the age old comforts of the “womb”. This whole problem arises from the fact that the individual has not “consciously” distinguished between “mother” and the “world” even after leaving childhood and this is exactly what the age old mythological rituals of “initiation” (like that of circumcision) aimed at i.e. beating into the conscious mind of the initiated child the fact that he is a “man” now – ready to face the world. The age old ritual of circumcision ensures that the transition takes place fully and completely; difficult and emotionally intense rites of passage beat this point deep into the psyche of the initiated child. The cutting away of the foreskin of phallic organ symbolizes cutting away of the umbilical cord such that the boy is now transited from one level of being to another.
One of the dangerous consequences of untreated mother complex is the lifelessness that men suffer from – particularly after failed relationships or heartbreaks or in general any failure in life. The reason most people suffer terrible heartbreaks, which cripples them from within, debilitates them to the point that nothing makes sense or nothing consoles them, is that they have not yet been able to “consciously” distinguish between the “mother” and the “world”. Deep down, the unconscious psyche “expects” the world to behave the same way the mother does. The world and the girl that one has fallen in love with, so to speak, are not the “mother”. One may hear people suffering from a heartbreak say that “she left me stranded and strangled, I was brooding over and she did not come over to wipe off my tears and console me. How could she do that”? This is a deep psychic “habit” and expectation, it is tantamount to a mother forsaking a child, hence such tragic psychic shock and pain takes place. The boy has not fully (down to the level of his unconscious) yet been able to distinguish between “loving mother” and “real harsh nature outside”.
One may note that this “unconscious” often surfaces up when people in love call each other “baby”! Mother complex is one of the primary reasons as to why men become victims of the (mythical figures of) vampires sucking blood out of men i.e. toxic relationships that leave men totally lifeless solely because they crave for a maternal mode of relationship. This also very importantly tells our mothers on how not to raise their young. In ancient mythology, mother complex is symbolized in the mythic imagery of mothers as “dragons” who end up eating their own children, meaning that the over-protectiveness of mother leaves their child ineligible to participate in the harsh difficult world because a child needs to develop independent skill set to participate in the world or else he will be always going to look for external support for petty things. One may check works of Erich Neumann on this issue for further study.
Such mother complex is also in a way at the root of all life escapism; finding comfort in drugs, ideologies, addictions, cult worship that mimics the comfort of a mother – the feeling of safe haven and protection. We need to realize that life is nothing but struggle; it is “becoming”; in fact it is this struggle, dynamism & dialectic that keep the existence moving and booming. Human being has been created in struggle and difficulty says the Quran (laqad khalaqnal insaana fi kabad). Circumcision as originally practiced in aboriginals made sure that the ritual is performed with intricate care and detail such that the boy is fully cured of mother complex. Readers are requested to read few pages from Campbell’s texts to begin to appreciate the immense richness and the complexity of this ritual as originally practiced by the primitives; for example, one can read Campbell, ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’. Joseph Campbell Foundation, 2008, pages 7 & 116-117. How we can perform this ritual today, more effectively, to salvage its true meaning warrants a separate article for some other day.
(Author has done masters in philosophy from JNU Delhi. Email: [email protected])
